Was there ever such a footling international match at Lord's as the one played
on Sunday by the weakened teams of England and Australia?

A slightly less than full house dozed through another grim ritual, enacted to satisfy the apparatchiks who, in their wisdom, determined that there should be seven of these matches to round off the season.

Count them: the Oval, Southampton, Chester-le-Street, and two each at Lord's and Trent Bridge. Will anybody be awake when they finally put their bats away on Sept 20? Does a single person, beyond the dressing rooms, care the proverbial tinker's cuss about the outcome?

There was a time when the England and Wales Cricket Board, or the Test and County Cricket Board as it used to be known, arranged these matters properly. Before the start of a Test series, in late May and early June, England would play three one-day internationals to set up the summer. The matches formed an amuse-gueule for the main course, which was Test cricket.

The international fixture list has expanded, of course, and the lopsided English summer must now contain seven Tests, as well as giving up a month for the domestic Twenty20 competition. But seven matches, coming at the end of a Test series that was always likely to be exhausting, is four too many.

A match at Lord's, any match, is usually an occasion. Few spectators would have felt bold enough to make that claim yesterday. It was just another fixture to be fulfilled, one more stop on the carousel. A nice way to spend a Sunday in September it may have been. A memorable game of cricket it was not.

Yet how many of these matches are remembered? Be honest now: what was the last one-day international you can recall? Outside the World Cup (and the last one, in the Caribbean two years ago, was possibly the biggest balls-up in the history of international sport), how many one-day matches linger in the mind for longer than a day?

As Kingsley Amis said, more will mean worse. After this interminable bunfight against the Australians, England go immediately to the Champions Trophy in South Africa, then return to the republic for a tour that kicks off with 11 one-day matches, over 20 and 50 overs, before the first Test starts in Centurion on Dec 16. Were England to reach the Champions Trophy final, a long shot admittedly, they will have played 25 one-day matches between Tests.

This is the world that Andrew Flintoff wants to rejoin, and he is welcome to it. This, and the Indian Premier League, which has assumed a commercial importance that, for the time being, is sweeping everything else out of its path. Yes, more will mean worse, and much more will mean much worse.

In a sense it doesn't matter that England are hopeless at one-day cricket, and have been since 1992, when they were unlucky to lose the World Cup final in Melbourne to Pakistan's 'cornered tigers'. Whether they win or not, people still pay good money (£90 top whack) to watch them, knowing they will probably be disappointed. It is one of sport's great conundrums.

Next year domestic one-day cricket will be played over 40 overs, which was satisfactory four decades ago, when the Sunday slog revived interest in the game, but appears to serve no purpose today. What a shame the counties have decided to do away with the longer form of the shorter game, in particular the old Gillette Cup, later sponsored by NatWest, which provided terrific entertainment over 60 overs a side.

Those were wonderful times, recalled in the mind's eye with so much affection by so many. Those finals, and quarter and semi-finals, too, were big days out, which meant something to everybody. Now there is a one-day game every blessed week, and each one is forgotten by twilight. It is sport without meaning, and sport without meaning has no purpose.